This relates to mechanical guides and supports and, more particularly, to guides and supports for optical cables.
In central offices, and similar locations, interconnected telecommunication equipment modules have been typically housed in equipment racks on frames, and often separated by distances measured in feet. Their interconnections were typically done through wires, or wire cables, (wire elements) that stretched between the equipment modules and coupled to connectors, or plugs, at front panels of the equipment modules. The wire elements so connected were dressed (tied together) and, to provide physical support for the dressed wires, mechanical elements have been used, such as ring sets or xe2x80x9ctowel barsxe2x80x9d to which the wire elements were attached with plastic ties, or xe2x80x9csewnxe2x80x9d with waxed rope. An example of a commercially available wire-support ring is shown in FIG. 1, and an example of a xe2x80x9ctowel barxe2x80x9d is shown in FIG. 2. For longer distances, such as from one cabinet to another, large troughs have often been used, in which all the wire elements or cables were laid.
The telecommunication industry is moving in the direction of using optical fibers for communicating information, and not just for long distances, but also for relatively short ones, such as from the front panel of one rack-mounted module to another rack-mounted module on the same frame. The operating characteristics of optical fibers, however, are very sensitive to physical pressure on the fibers and, therefore, use of xe2x80x9ctowel barsxe2x80x9d such as the one shown in FIG. 2, is somewhat problematic because of the necessary physical strapping of optical cable to the xe2x80x9ctowel bars.xe2x80x9d The use of rings such as the one shown in FIG. 1 may, similarly, be problematic because they provide inadequate protection against snagging of the optical fibers by workers and because they can easily contribute to a bending of the optical fibers with a bending radius that is too small (which, itself, imposes a physical stress on the fibers). In short, a need exists for a means that provides support for front-panel optical fiber connections, provides good routing guidance, and protects the fibers from inadvertent snagging.
The existing need is satisfied, and an advance in the art is achieved with an arrangement that includes a trough element for holding optical fibers, and support elements that are adapted to-attach the fiber-holding trough element to an equipment frame, an equipment rack, or to a telecommunication module. More specifically, the fiber-holding trough element and the support elements are interconnected to have the opening of the trough element generally face the front panel of the equipment module when the support elements are connected to the front panel of the telecommunication rack or to the equipment module. In some embodiments, the trough element is a channel with a cross section that is generally U-shaped, with its opening partially covered. Also in some embodiments, the support elements are adjustable, to permit placing the trough element at different distances from the front panel of the telecommunication rack.